Esteemed Photographer Brian Harris Obituary: A Life Through the Lens

The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images each day on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a toddler in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a youthful Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

He is survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.